


So this is our natural conclusion

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asphyxiation, Blood, By this point its probably an AU, Cannibalism, Cannibalistic awakening, Conjoined Twins, Corpse Desecration, Dark Harry Potter, Dark Lord Harry Potter, Descent into Madness, Drowning, Erotic cannibalism, Hallucinations, Insanity, Insomnia, M/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Nosebleed, Obsession, POV Second Person, Pseudo-Incest, Sort Of, Stream of Consciousness, True Love, Vivisection, Vulnerability, autocannibalism, cremation, kind of, sexual awakening
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: From the very beginning, it was inevitable that one of you was going to end up dead, the only question left was who.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Very similar in style to my 'where monsters lie' series, however, this is going to be multi-chaptered and actually have a vague plot, I say 'vague' because I am truly abominable at plotting, so this is probably just going to be a hazy collection of short stories that all link together, but that's basically a plot right?

He is your brother and you are his. 

You had always known a part of you had been ripped out long before you were conscious of it. There had always been a hole in you, an endless space that made you ache, made you throb with longing for something you didn’t understand. That had always been the way it was, just something you didn’t have a name for was missing, a part of you that was neglected to be made, a mere omission. At least that was what you always thought. Now you don’t. Now you know. Standing here with the photograph in your hand, one you assume you aren’t supposed to see because you aren’t supposed to be up here. One of two babies – thoracopagus – according to note. Rare and grotesque and terrible, two bodies looking like bodies never should. Locked together in a permanent embrace, foreheads so close they were practically touching, and skin stretched further than skin should ever stretch. Staring at these aberrations you touch your heart, you have to. Have to feel it beating, the life beneath your skin. There is no reason that you should be affected by this, no reason at all. No reason, other than that thin white line that runs all the way down your chest and over your abdomen. That thin white line that no one ever told you what it really was, just an accident that you don’t remember. 

He is your brother and you are his. 

Your hand doesn’t leave your heart, you know that abhorrent creature in the photograph is you, you can feel it deep inside your bones. After all, there had always been something missing, something or someone. You remember catching glimpses of conversations, things people said you didn’t need to know, a name no one ever explained, now you knew. Tom had always been here, a shadow, a whisper, a secret, and now you know why. Now you know why your heart aches so. Your heart is the heart that he was denied, the reason he is dead, buried six feet underground, whilst you, who were no better than he, can walk, head swathed in oxygen. Alive. Alive when he is dead. Breathing in the air when his mouth is filled with soil. Staring at your own hands when his can hardly be more than dust. Why did you live, and he die? Why do you still feel him? Trapped under your skin, waiting for you to let him out. It is as if his heart is beating with yours, your single beating heart. It is as though he is still attached, standing so close to you, asking why you let him die. Your mouth is dry, and the world is revolving, colours blurring together and black seeping into the corners of your vision. On the edge of the periphery, you swear there is a figure smiling at you, but when you turn there is nothing but black in this room that you’re not supposed to be in. 

He is your brother and you are his. 

The room is cold, and you are lying awake after midnight, you can feel something throbbing in the emptiness. Hear something breathing beside you, though you know there’s nothing there. It doesn’t stop the feeling though, a constant presence, a constant manifestation, the thing you’ve always been missing. When you close your eyes, you imagine what that something is. You think it would look just like you, the same hair, the same eyes, the same mouth, always looking at you, always staring. Your eyes in your brother’s face, because he is your brother. Does he blame you for what you did to him? That is what you wonder, does his corpse lie there in the dark knowing that it died because of you? Simply because you wanted to live. You know it is pathetic, but if you knew where he lay, you might just have gone, just have stood on his grave, six feet above his body. You would just have checked that he was still there, still shut beneath the soil. It was stupid to be worried about such things, but you had killed him, and things liked that, are so very rarely laid so easily to rest. As you drift to the edge of dreams, you are lying next to him underground, the soil pressing against your chest, seeping through your skin, so cold and so damp inside you. You can see him, lying there. A boy like yourself. Dark hair and dark eyes like everything you imagined. He reaches out to scrape your heart, your skin dissolving beneath his fingers. As the nails scratch your ribs you jolt. 

He is your brother and you are his. 

You wake up with a start and swear you see him standing in your room, but when you turn the light on there is nothing in the shadows. You don’t sleep after that. You lie awake in the dark staring across the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of what you think you saw. Just a glimpse of the shadows of your dreams, of the hidden deformed things that hide in the dark. Your eyes are burning when you finally see something. Just a shift in the darkness, a wisp of smoke with a monster’s smile. A glitch that has you reaching for the light, your fingers hover on the switch, ready to dispel the monsters if you have to. As you stare, eyes aching, you see the outline of a figure, blurred by the dark. Your fingers don’t click on the light, although you should. Instead, they hover, just staring, and you know that shape is staring back. It is watching you. It is interested. You stay there, the two of you, locked together like you were at birth, affixed forever and you wonder why it took so long to meet him. How you went all those years with something missing when he was so willing to be found. That is why you don’t turn on the light, because you don’t want to scare him away, you don’t want to lose the person whose loss you have been grieving without ever realising it. You do not turn on the light, but he does. It is a small glow coming from his fingers or maybe a wand, you aren’t sure, and you aren’t focussing on it. Your eyes are fixed on where you think his face is. 

He is your brother and you are his. 

The light grows, it is not as cold as when you cast it, instead, something in that light is smouldering. The glow flickers a little but does not go out. There is a movement around his mouth, he is smiling with teeth that are too pale, and a mouth that doesn’t quite look right. Slowly he raises the light, never enough that his features clarify, but enough to show you the contours of his face, the sharpness of his bones and the elegance of his neck. It is obvious that he looks like you, but there is something wrong. In the haze it looks like your face has been smudged, all the features are indistinct, fuzzy like looking at him through the rain. Your image is certainly there, but it is twisted, warped, mutilated: eyes too dark in their sockets, just expanses of black, and his mouth a slash straight across his face. His features are curving, constantly shifting and he smiles as you have never smiled before. For all his horrors though, there is something else. A beauty and a magnetism, they drip from him like oil, pooling at his feet and making the room smell like its burning. You can almost imagine him setting himself alight, burning in front of your eyes, making you watch him die again and again and again. He tilts his head then as if he knows your thoughts. You stay like that, the two of you together. His neck tilted back and yours leaning forward. You a mere mortal, and he the angel-demon that you condemned to die. 

He is your brother and you are his. 

When you wake up in the morning and find scratches on your ribs and visions behind your eyes, you are not as scared as perhaps you should be, and you certainly don’t show them to anyone. This is your secret, your brother, returned to you from darkness and from death. You suspect that other people would not understand, that they would denounce the things you see, the things you know are true, simply because they think they are impossible. But they did not see him. They did not, as you do, feel him prowling on the edge of your consciousness, waiting for you to welcome him, asking, pleading so desperately. He has been waiting for so long, scratching against your skull, begging for you to remember him, and now that you finally do, why should you stop? Why should you deny him a friend, when you denied him so much more than that? This is a favour, a kindness that you owe him from the very depth of your heart. It is the least you can do, to have him by your side in the dark, when you left him in the ground to rot. You need to show him that you better than that, that you do love him, that you do need him, that you do want him, forever in your head. So, no, no one else could possibly understand, could possibly see the nuances and distinctions that you see, could possibly come close to knowing the tragedy of your loss, and the aching that it had left behind, gouged into your very soul. 

He is your brother and you are his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoracopagus twins are a form of conjoined twin where the "two bodies are fused from the upper thorax to lower belly. The heart is always involved in these cases. As of 2015, separation of a genuinely shared heart has not offered survival to two twins; a designated twin may survive if allotted the heart, sacrificing the other twin." (Wikipedia)


	2. Chapter 2

He is your vision and you are his.

He comes with you when you leave home and return to school. You see him standing at the ends of corridors swathed in shadows, or sitting on window ledges, his face obscured by the sun, or lying on your bed, his hands covering his eyes. Although you never see his face, you know he is always smiling, always waiting patiently for you to return, as though he is a dog. The others do not see him, and when you spin them stories, they laugh and tell you how original you are, how inventive you can be with your fantasies. They don’t believe you, just as you thought they wouldn’t, just as Tom told you they wouldn’t when you were on the edge of sleep and he was still smiling. They don’t understand, they couldn’t possibly understand, that was what he murmured to you. That is what he always murmurs to you as his body merges with the darkness and you are left with his hollow eyes scorching holes in your brain. The more he says it, the more real it seems, the more likely that they will never understand. That they _could_ never understand. So, eventually, you stop trying to make them see. You stop sharing what he says to you because they aren’t interested, they don’t care. The only person who truly cares for you is Tom. 

He is your vision and you are his. 

You see him often in places he shouldn’t be. Standing too close to other people, his blurred smile suggests a thousand things he’d like to do to people like your ‘friends’, but he doesn’t. All he does is stand too close and smile. You don’t know how you realise, you just do, that you see him more when you are tired. The darker and deeper the shadows beneath your eyes, the more vivid he becomes. Colours that were washed out, drained of all their life, become ever so intense, until finally when you can scarcely keep your eyes open, he appears before you, gorgeously authentic. A genuine angel with a diamond smile. When your eyes are burning, he is at his most beautiful. That is when his features are so distinct, sharp enough that you swear if you raised your fingers you would cut them on his jaw. Severe shadows striking lines that you wish were emulated on your own face, and the colours of his skin no longer dripping down to form pools in his collarbones. Instead, when your eyes are burning, that striking blend of colours are kept between those sharp shadow lines, and you wish more than ever that you looked like him. But that is a distant thought you bury deep beneath your skin. You are not him. You are you. You are alive and real, and he is nothing but colours stuck between their lines. You focus on other things. Things like the fact he is always standing beside you, walking as you walk and doing as you do. Always with you, as though he is once again trying to become a part of you that can never be separated. You feel it most intensely when you and he are lying side by side at night. He never leaves you when you are in the haze of consciousness, your perceptions hanging on the edge of the fringe. In those moments, he is lying with you in your bed, murmuring lovely things in your ear, filling your mind with such delectable words, affirmations that you drink as if they were manna-dew. You never stop him speaking. You like him too much. 

He is your vision and you are his. 

You do not sleep so much these days. You would rather sit up and share secrets with your Tom than sleep. People would call you strange, or at least stranger if you talk to people who aren’t there during the day if you laugh with and gaze into someone’s eyes, someone whom they are all too weak to see. Anyway, you like being awake at three in the morning with the moonlight sliding through the slits in the curtains and bathing your bed in blue. That glow reminds you of the water in the baths when no one else is there. Cold and blue and beautiful. Immersing yourself in a caerulean world that makes you feel as though you are drowning. If it is possible, Tom looks even more perfect when his face is coloured with a hundred hues of blue. There are shades and tints that you have never seen before hanging beneath his eyes, and curls of almost grey that define every bone. When he is wrapped in this thick blue tinge, he is more than human, and that makes you more than human because only the great can see the great. That is what he says with that mouth, whose corners are streaked with purple, that mouth that becomes more interesting the longer you stare at it, that mouth which makes you think of something you’re not sure if you like. Think of running your fingers over that mouth and seeing if the tips turn blue. That is all you want to do, at least, that’s what you tell yourself. It is because of that mouth and that face, and those lovely simple words that you follow him, even when you shouldn’t. Follow him when your eyes are stinging, and you should be sleeping. Follow him outside and to places you shouldn’t go. You know you will be missed, but this feels so important, so critical, so significant to your life in a way you couldn’t possibly explain to anyone else. That is why you follow him to the black lake when the sun is starting to set, and the world feels like a dream.

He is your vision and you are his. 

He is already in the water when you take off your shoes and your socks and your jumper, discard them in a pile and walk towards him. He does not turn. He does not acknowledge you. He just keeps walking, the water lapping his thighs. So, you walk too. The sand is cool and damp, and your feet sink, leaving behind deep footprints that will tell everyone what you have been doing. You keep your eyes on the horizon, on the black blur of his body that stands concrete against the purple sky; his figure guiding you like a prophet between the stars. It does not take long before the sand on the lake-floor becomes coarser, scratching the soles of your feet, and you wonder if they bleed. But still, you do not stop, because you have not reached him. He wants you, at least, that is what you hope, that is what you pray; that he is leading you out here for some greater purpose, and that when you reach him, hold him, touch him, all that he has been hiding will be revealed. That is the single thought that compels you onward, onward, onward, even when your feet no longer touch the sand, you continue. You glide out, out from confinement, from the things that you have always been, and into the open waters of the world. The sky is so much darker now, the purple melting into the black and the single blot of his body melting away with it. You think its just your eyes, the water dripping from your lashes and distorting what you see. That is what you hope at least because out here, there are so many things to be afraid of. Out here the water is cold, and false shapes slide effortlessly beneath the surface. You are shivering and your clothes suddenly feel sodden, but you do not turn back. You have come too far out to just return. So, you swim onward, onward, onward, and you focus on other things. How your hands look ethereal as they glide through the water as if you have moved beyond mere humanity as if you have become truly more than mortal. Under the darkness, your hands glow white and blue, the tips turning black as they push deeper down and impel you forward. Looking down below the sliding surface, you can’t see your feet, you can’t see anything but a great expanse of black, so threatening, and yet, so beautiful. 

He is your vision and you are his. 

It is truly dark when you lose sight of him. When suddenly you are alone in the cold water, hearing nothing, staring at nothing, heading towards nothing. Barely keeping afloat, just a body drifting in the vast gloom, illuminated only by the moon’s empty glow. The chill is pushing deeper into your bones now, settling into the marrow and making you useless. The water feels too cold, and you feel too alone, and you know there is something sliding through the black beneath your feet. It brushes against your ankles and makes you jolt and swallow. You wonder whether it is worth swimming at all, aimless and hopeless, alone in the dark. Perhaps you should just let go of everything and sink slowly down. You do. You suppose it is better to see the shapes in the dark. The water is cold on your face, cold and calming, and you think you could die like this, immersed in the black, comforted by the emptiness. You hear it then, loud in the muffled silence: the void calling your name ever so quietly. It comes from beneath you, deep below in the endless darkness. You go up to breathe again, the oxygen freezing your lungs. Plunging back below the glass surface, you briefly feel as though you are flying. Briefly. You know you are sinking, slowly sinking, down to a realm that isn’t yours. When you are deep enough that your hands become hazy, white diffusing into the dark, you hear the beautiful sound again: a hum in the void, a hymn to your name. You know the voice though you’ve never heard it before. It is your voice, with more practice and precision. It is Tom. He has not abandoned you to die. Despite the dark, you can see a shape sliding through the water, a hand tinged blue and green and black pulls you down that much deeper. So deep that the moonlight is scattered too far to provide light for your mortal eyes to see. You realise when you are deep beneath the surface, that he has never touched you before, that before this moment you two were nothing more than ghosts who shared a bed at night. Now you are so much more. Now he is holding the back of your neck, nails digging into your skin, not that you care, and smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. The water distorts his features, warping the shadows and altering the highlights. He is still beautiful though, and you can almost forget where you are. Almost. Your burning lungs remind you. They force you to acknowledge the painful truth that you are human, and that you need to breathe the sweet air that flourishes above the surface. You bite your tongue and try to tell yourself that you don’t need to breathe, that his image will keep you alive forever. It is a terrible lie. You know it is, so does he. He watches you in the gloom, watching and waiting to see whether you’ll abandon him, whether you’ll leave him in the darkness once more. You don’t want to, but with every moment you feel your lungs filling with water, soon you will be choking and drowning in your black crushing dreams. You want to swim upward. You have to swim upward. You need to swim upward. Want to, have to, need to, or else you’ll die. But as much as you do not want to die, you want him to keep holding you. You never want him to let you go, you need him to remember you, to appreciate you, to think that you are worthy of drowning with him. He continues to watch you, his eyes as sharp as the needles in your lungs. He smirks as the razor edges pierce through each and every bronchiole, sewing a beautiful pattern that _will_ kill you, if he wants them to.

He is your vision and you are his. 

You open your eyes and stare at the sky. The water swallows your legs and licks at your fingertips, still ever so cold, still so close to freezing you. As the world clarifies, it is clear that you are lying in the shallows of the lake. You can feel the sand moulding itself around your head, and your whole body sinking into the softness. The darkness of the world is cracking open now, and despite the moon still glowing, large and circular, a slice of dawn is starting to spread from the horizon. You know you should move. But you don’t. You can’t. Lying here is pleasant, even if it is cold and wet. Lying here gives you a moment to think, to feel the water churn in your lungs and the hollow burn in your throat. It gives you a minute to process that you are still alive, that you don’t remember how or why other than Tom didn’t want you to die. He didn’t want to lose you. You smile at that thought. Him, unable to let you go, him, for all his courtesy and artificial sophistication, anxious not to lose you, and everything you connect him to. You sit up. You are soaked and shivering on the sand, waterweeds wrapped around your legs. Staring out at the indigo water, you try to see, though you don’t know what you are looking for, there is really nothing out there, nothing but faint shadows sliding below the surface. You drag yourself slowly back until you are against a sandbank. Here the sand is dry and soft, and you can just lie still. As the dawn spills across the sky, you wonder whether they have been looking for you, and you wonder what you’ll say when they find you. How can you explain something so profound as the feeling of death nestling against your heart? Being that close to death felt strange, not unpleasant, more exciting, and you wonder whether Tom felt it too. The weight in your stomach and the pounding of your heart as death’s fingers held the back of your neck and drank the oxygen from your lungs. You wonder if Tom felt it, if Tom liked it, if Tom would do it again. You both must know that he has changed what the two of you are to each other. That he has opened a Pandora's box of fear and thrills and things that get your stomach twisting. Things that are equally terrifying and electrifying, chilling and exhilarating. You never want him to stop and yet you are scared to let him go any further. You thought that all he wanted was to be close to you, to merely live alongside you and nothing more. You were wrong. He wants that, of course he does, but he also wants so much more than that. He wants to drag you to his world, show you all the things he thinks you’ll like, and you suspect some things that he knows you won’t. He doesn’t just want to _be_ with you, he wants to _become_ you. To complete you in every perfect way. To hold you and have you and meld you back together once more. That look in his eyes when the world was dipped in blue, says he wants the two of you to be more than mortal together. Become symbiotic and synergetic, making something you don’t yet understand come true. You want that too. You want him and you to be dragged into one, two parts returned to their true form, a form that is so much more than what you could ever be alone. That is all you have wanted since you met him again. So, you lie there in the sand, the white of the morning stinging your eyes, and you muse at what you saw beneath the surface of the sky. Whether the figure whose image you know so well and whose hands were speckled blue and green and black was the Leviathan, and whether you heard the voice of god murmuring your name. 

He is your vision and you are his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter is a bit weird, but I've been wanting to write drowning for ages now, only I could never think of a stand-alone fic for it, so in the end, it became part of this. I hope it wasn't too terrible.


	3. Chapter 3

He is your angel and you are his.

People are starting to think that you’re strange. You get yourself a reputation as someone who has changed. To all the others you are the boy who stares for hours over the lake as though he knows there is something out there. Just sits there, watching it from every classroom, daydreaming about something and never paying attention. You try not to listen to them. If they saw the things that you did, then they too would stare out the window and pray to see them again. To see _him_ again. He never lets you though. Tom still only comes to you when it is dark and cold, and your eyes are burning. You learn not to mind, seeing him then, is better than not seeing him at all, and seeing him just once a day is enough for you not to care about all the other changes in your life. Not to care that your grades are falling or that your friends sigh more when you ask them to repeat things you didn’t hear. Sometimes you catch them rolling their eyes and saying you really are in a world of your own. They just don’t understand you. That is also what Tom says, when he lies on your bed at night, his fingers creeping closer to you. You’d like to touch his fingers, though you’re not sure why; you’re not interested in touching anyone else’s. That is just another distraction in your life. Fingers, people’s fingers. What they could do with them, what you want to do with them. You watch people bend the knuckles and wrap their fingers around their quills, and you swallow, though you don’t know why. It is someone’s hands that distract you at that critical moment in the quidditch game. Flying high, so close to victory, and then you saw Draco’s hands, and Draco’s hands should not have been distracting, but they were, and then you were falling and falling and smashing your face on the ground.   
When you sat you up everything hurt and your nose was bleeding, thick and red and hot all over your face, and the only thing you could see other than the black spots heavy in your vision is Tom. He was standing there, watching you. You’d panicked of course, and everyone thought you were weird, after all, hadn’t everyone had nosebleeds before? Everyone apart from Tom, he just stayed there, watching the blood stain paper towel after paper towel. 

He is your angel and you are his. 

You think about it for days. How he appeared to you, how he watched you, how he watched the blood. You know you shouldn’t, know before you even think about it, that you shouldn’t. But you do. You do it because you’re perverse and terrible and because he’s the only one who really _understands_ you. You make your nose bleed again. It’s just as hot as before, hot and wet and uncontrollable, sliding down your face, over your mouth and dripping off your chin. You regret it immediately and search for a towel, there isn’t one nearby, so you settle for your shirt, watching the red circle bloom wider and redder. It makes you feel sick, and a small part of you knows that blood should be kept on the inside of bodies, but at the same time, it's so beautiful. Like red flowers or strawberry juice on sugar, and sure enough, it brings him back to you. The edges of his body are tinted red in the artificial lights of your room, but you don’t care, he is there, you brought him to you. Perhaps it is the semblance of control that you like? You’re not really sure, but nor do you care. You don’t care about anything but him standing by your side and staring at you with something new in his eyes, something you’ve never had the pleasure to see, something that you’d very much like to see again. But he fades away as soon as the blood begins to clot, drying like a birthmark across your face. From that moment, you know, that as much as you could ever want to, you won’t be able to stop. You want to, need to, _have_ to, see that blood again. Your blood. His blood. Anyone’s blood. You just need stained circles of red in your life, because that is what will bring him, and bind him to you. There’s power in it too though, to be reminded of what you can do to yourself if you want, and at first, it’s hard. It hurts. But soon you work it out, those words that you need to say, the ones that let you hurt yourself in the most painless way. What it does to you is fantastic, a high without the risk, a way to alleviate the constant drone of existence, a way to be submerged in the wooze. It surrounds you like the water did, crushing you, holding you, bringing you closer to him. You know you should stop. That it isn’t healthy. But you get to see Tom like this, get to see him standing in the corridor looking like he wants to make you bleed himself, and you would do anything for that. 

He is your angel and you are his. 

It has become your favourite addiction. The thing you indulge yourself in, keep secret from everybody else, even your friends, though you can hardly call them such, anymore. You save yourself up, taunting, teasing, baiting yourself until you can’t stand it anymore. Then you say those words and blood is spilling over your fingers and you get a rush and twist in your stomach. At first though, you do _try_ to limit yourself. Once a week do you indulge in his existence during the day, dipping your fingers into his world and pulling him into yours. Once a week doesn’t seem enough though. It loses the rush quite fast. Where is the fun in making him appear to you on a Saturday afternoon, when you are alone and there’s no one to watch you wipe the blood over your face as you reach for a shirt?   
You don’t quite know how came to it, but the idea settled in your head as though it had been placed there, and you just _had_ to give it a go. You just _had_ to make him appear to you during class and make the world more interesting. It felt thrilling. A twisting in your stomach, an anticipation folding itself over and over, and then you said it under your breath, and you had to catch a sigh as the blood trickled over your lips. You raise your shaking hand and ask for a tissue. There are none. You ask to go to the bathroom, and you are allowed.   
Your hands are stained red by the time you get there, and you are sure you have left behind a breadcrumb trail of blood. You go to the sink and you are _going_ to get a paper towel, but then you catch sight of yourself. There is blood on your hands, and blood on your lips, and blood on your chin. There is blood everywhere. It continues to ooze, and you continue to watch, mesmerised more than anything. You’re not sure why, but you touch it. Smear it around. Smell it on your fingers. It’s different to everything else you’ve ever smelled before. This is so human, so evocative, so – good. Part of you thinks to be scared, but then Tom is behind you, murmuring something. You see how close he is in the mirror, how he could touch you if he wanted, and you want him to. You want him to so badly. He is the one who reminds you, blood is a part of human ritual, blood is beautiful, blood is sacred, so why shouldn’t it feel good on your fingers. You take another glance in the mirror, you look a wreck, but there’s no one here to judge you, other than yourself. So, you do it. The thing, you sense, he wants you to do. Your tongue is rough on your palm, rough and hard and warm. You lick your hand, only dipping the tip of your tongue into the blood. Tasting yourself feels weirdly intimate, like something you’re not supposed to do, and you reason that you’re not supposed to. The taste is nothing like you’ve had before. Metallic and strange. Tempting in a way you can’t describe. What you can describe though, is the look Tom is giving you: hunger is the best way to think of it, and that makes your stomach squeeze again and you push your fingers deeper into your mouth. Tom sighs heavily, his teeth gnawing the edge of his lip, and he comes closer, his fingers hovering over the curve of your shoulders, so that is his almost touching you. Then the bathroom door is opening, and Tom is dissolving back into the shadows. Draco stares at you. Class is over and you have been standing here tasting blood for too long. 

He is your angel and you are his. 

You can’t stop thinking of Draco after that, and you don’t really know why. There is nothing special about him. Nothing special, other than that, he’s the only one who's seen you do something unthinkable. You wonder what he saw, what he thought he saw, and then what he convinced himself that he saw. There is a thrill in knowing that someone else knows the things you do, that someone else has seen. You wonder if his stomach twisted like yours, you suppose it did. That his mouth felt as dry as yours did. He had definitely stared too long, eyes flicking between your fingers and your mouth. You see his eyes drift to you more from them on. Sitting across the classroom, you know your eyes are on his hands, and his eyes are on your face. They always seem to be on your face, watching your every move. It makes your stomach squeeze more, makes you feel desirable, and that’s almost as heady as the feeling of blood on your hands. You’ve never felt wanted before, not by anyone external; Tom doesn’t count. You don’t need Tom during the day if you have Draco’s eyes hanging on you. You don’t need Tom at night either, not if you have Draco rattling about your brain. Draco. Draco. Draco. You don’t know how it came on you so fast, how he suddenly meant something, or why. As much as you try you can’t pin down what it is about him. You like his hands, and his face, and his smile and the way he looks at you, it's different to Tom. Not hunger, but something more desperate, something needier and just _that_ much more intoxicating. His gaze his eager and enthusiastic, like an overexcited puppy, and you really want to know what he’s thinking when he looks at you. 

He is your angel and you are his. 

Blood become your other obsession. The blood on your hands, the blood in your mouth. You think of it far more than you should. The way it slides over your body so effortlessly, embedding itself under your fingernails and ingraining itself into every crevice of your skin. It is all you think about and it shouldn’t be. But you can’t help it, nothing has made you feel this way before, and part of you doubts that anything will ever make you feel this way again. The only times that you have come close to this feeling is when you’re staring at other people’s hands, and thinking of what they could do to you. But that’s not like this. This feels different, extraordinary, absolutely profound. Like it’s eating from the inside out, and it hurts, it hurts so much. You want it to go away. You want to not feel like this, but at the same time, you never want it to stop. It is though you’ve found a new part of you, a piece that had been locked away since, since forever, and now for the first time you were letting it out, and you want to explore it. You want to know everything about it, however disgusting that makes you. Not that you mind, not when Tom says he likes it too, not when you think Draco might like it. In your mind, he says you look good with your hands stained red, and blood on your tongue. Those words just ricochet around your brain, good, you look good, look so good. You imagine him saying other things, things that make your stomach twist again and your face feel hot, and you have to wonder whether he would like there to be more blood. You would. If you could, you’d have your covered in it, saturated from head to toe in red. You wonder if Draco would like that too; if Draco would like to be the one to do that to you. 

He is your angel and you are his. 

Draco has become your every thought. You hate him for him for it, but you also hope that he never stops staring at you. Even when he isn’t there, you can feel his eyes boring into the back of your head until it hurts. You think about him more than you think about Tom, and he doesn’t like that. He sits tapping his nails and whining that you’re ignoring him. You are, you know you are. But you’re allowed to, your life doesn’t need to revolve around someone who can’t touch you. You leave him in your bed, to complain to himself, and you take a shower. Under the water, the heat burning your back, you swallow. The water is hard and heavy and far too hot, like people’s eyes lingering on you. You know you shouldn’t, but that hasn’t stopped you yet. You touch yourself slowly. Fingers pretending that you’re not going to, whilst knowing you are. You fumble. Your hands are shaking and the squeezing in your stomach is becoming unbearable. It’s moments like this, that you wonder if there is something wrong with you? Or does everyone feel like this when they’re alone underwater that is much too hot? You lean against the wall, the tiles cool on your back, a hand between your thighs. Your head searches for a face, but what you think of is Draco’s hands. Draco’s fingers and your blood. You drag your hand up and think of Draco’s fingers, how they curl around his broom during quidditch, bending at the knuckles, and you think of them curving around you. The air is hot and damp as you suck it between your teeth, you know you’re flushed as you think of him pressing you against these tiles, smearing your blood across them in long red streaks. You’d love his hands to be steeped in red, leaving smudged fingerprints all over you. Fingerprints. Handprints. Bloody kisses. You want to feel him holding you against the wall, your blood and his blood mixing and mingling and merging under the water. You tip your head back, hitting the tiles, you can feel your body clenching and you try and slow, try to make it last a little longer. But you can’t. Your stomach jolts and you come to the searing image of Draco’s mouth all over you, and the taste of his blood on your tongue.   
Opening your eyes, it takes you a moment to orientate yourself, to realise that you are alone surrounded by clean, white tiles. There is no blood on the walls, and there is no one beside you. You sink down, head still against those tiles, hating yourself for what you want. You don’t know how long you sit in the shower, knees drawn up to your chin, not caring that the water is too hot or that your fingers are shaking. All you know is that you’re sick. So, so sick. You can’t stop yourself then, calling Tom to you with your blood. Together you sit under the spray and watch the red drain down the plughole. He doesn’t question you, he only says that he doesn’t think you’re sick. 

He is your angel and you are his.


	4. Chapter 4

He is your other half and you were his.

It had taken a long time, and a lot of staring before Draco had asked you if you’d like to meet sometime when there was no one else around. You’d agreed coyly. Not telling him that it felt as though you’d been waiting for so long for him to just say something. Neither of you wanted to be seen so you wait until the holidays, until there is no one to ask questions about where you will disappear to. Or at least, no one to ask Draco questions, _no one_ seems to ask _you_ questions anymore.  
That was how you came to be lying on the bare ground, on a Friday, nothing but grey above, and nothing but green below. That’s how you came to be lying on the damp grass wondering if this was what love felt like. You don’t think so. When the two of you were staring across in the classrooms, it was fun, something you shouldn’t have been doing, an exhilarating thrill that just seemed to engulf you. Now though, now it just feels like two people looking at each other, the meaning behind it has all been lost. You hope this isn’t love, because this is so boring. Love was supposed to be different, overwhelming and distracting, a pounding in your chest that you couldn’t ignore, and a thousand words sticking in your throat. This wasn’t any of those things. Where love was supposed to be world ending and soul-crushing, a profound understanding of something that you had never known before, this was just so… mundane. Almost painfully awkward, the two of you just sitting together in a self-conscious silence staring at the green and the grey.  
You can’t help but feel a little disappointed. He was so promising, so exciting, in your mind but so tedious in real life. Draco is dull and you are bored. You wanted someone raw and wild and fun, someone, who could explain what it is you’re feeling, but Draco isn’t that person. He’s too prim, too proper, too perfect. He’s like a diamond, all polished and refined. He’s just not what you’re looking for. 

He is your other half and you were his.

It’s not that Draco isn’t attractive enough, he is. Especially up close, with his pale eyes, and pale hair, though it is washed out by a world of expectations, not that it seemed to stop him from chasing after hundreds of hopeless dreams. He’s just empty. Draco wants to be things, but he just isn’t any of them. He doesn’t get you, He doesn’t know what you want. He just doesn’t _understand_ you. Instead, he is simply nice, a thing that is pleasant to look at from afar, but so terribly disappointing up close. You wanted, needed someone who understood the forest fire in your heart. He barely understands a match. There is someone who understands you though, and you don’t even try to stop your thoughts turning to him: Tom. Tom understands; Tom knows what it's like to have a bonfire in your heart because he does too. You can feel it crackling inside you, heating and curling around your heart. Lighting all your organs on fire and turning them to ash. You imagine how different it would be if you were lying out here with Tom. Then it wouldn’t be awkward. He would be confident, and so assured, already intimately understanding you without you ever having to say a word. He’d run his knuckles against your cheek, his lips pressing against your own. Now you know you’re definitely blushing, as you’ve never kissed anyone before. You don’t know what it feels like to have someone else’s mouth up against your own, to feel the texture of their lips, and the warmth of their breath. All the people you’ve ever heard said it was like rabbit-fur, so soft and ticklish and gentle, but you imagine it is like hitting gravel. Two mouths mashing against each other, trying to find an outlet for the bonfires inside them. Draco is staring at you now, staring right at you with that boring little smile. You realise then that you have been staring at his lips. You look away, feigning an embarrassment that you don’t really feel. Draco is nice, nice like the daisies that grow here. Nice and pleasant, but his personality is so intertwined with his name that they are parasites to each other, not like you and Tom. No, you and he are perfect symbiotes. He knows you better than you know yourself, and aren’t relationships supposed to be built on knowing each other? Anyway, you’ve never liked daisies, you’ve always preferred the foxgloves that grow behind you under the shade of the trees. They stand so impressive, beautiful and poisonous, just waiting for some naïve little creature to put one on their tongue, and choke on their poison. Compared to that, daisies just sound so – dull. 

He is your other half and you were his.

Though as much as you don’t care for him, you still find yourself holding Draco’s hand, feeling those privileged fingers that could never hope to understand you, clutch so hopelessly at your own. He is holding you for reassurance more than anything to do with love, pretending that if there is love, then the rest of his broken world doesn’t exist. He never wanted what you wanted, and whatever he thought he saw in the bathroom was certainly not what was really happening. You sigh and watch him as he watches you. He wants to kiss you. You can tell by the way he bites his lip, chewing it between his white pureblood teeth. It is the most interesting thing he has done all afternoon. So, you don’t push him away when he leans closer. Instead, you let him, let him press his lips against yours. They are disappointingly gentle, like everything else about him. He is simply so chary and careful and cautious, treating you like his mother’s fine china. It is underwhelming to kiss him, you might even say boring. That is what Tom is thinking, you can hear him whining in the back of your head, hear his groaning and watching him roll his eyes, he is painfully unimpressed that _this_ is what you are wasting your time with. Someone so ordinary, someone plain and cold, with no excitement on their tongue, and no secrets hidden behind their teeth. He says that he wouldn’t be like that, he wouldn’t be boring, that if you let him into your world then you’d have so much more fun. You try and block him out, it's not the time to be thinking about him when you’re kissing someone else. That doesn’t help though. The thought of Tom’s mouth and Tom’s teeth, and – You stop. Teeth. A part of your inner psyche repeats it, teeth, teeth, teeth. There are so many things you can do with your teeth, including biting other people’s lips. At first, you’re gentle, and Draco just makes a little muffled sound, surprise maybe. But when you bite harder, when you feel your teeth going through his lip, there is a gasp in his throat and panic in his eyes. You can taste the blood, it coats your tongue and spills from the corners of your mouth. He doesn’t let you enjoy it though, instead, he’s pushing you away and staring with what is probably horror in his eyes. There is blood on his chin, and it looks beautiful, spread across his pale skin. A long, smeared, streak of red. But he does not think it is so gorgeous. He looks at you in disgust, as if he’s finally seeing what you thought he always thought he saw: the sickness that seems to run through you. The monsters that you keep in your heart, as though the curtain which you were hiding behind has now fallen, and the result that he must look upon is completely abhorrent. 

He is your other half and you were his.

Draco is still staring at you when he touches that strip of red gently, hands shaking and brow furrowed, wincing when he hits the bit you put your teeth straight through. You can still taste him on your tongue, and you continue to taste him even after he is gone, even after the obscene things he says melt into the wind and leave you all alone. You don’t care. You don’t care at all, you just want to stare at the grey and the green and swallow his blood in your mouth. It tastes so good that you don’t remember to be disgusted with yourself, tastes so good that you forget what you just did was wrong in every single way possible. You forget because Tom is so proud, so incredibly proud of what you did. He tells you so from inside your skull, tells you that he’s proud, tells you that you looked so good, and you just lie there taking the praise, because no one has ever made you feel _that_ good before.  
You go back inside when it begins to rain, though it feels nice to have a coolness against your skin. You don’t see anyone and you’re glad for it, as there is still blood around your mouth and you don’t imagine many people would take kindly to seeing you like that. You wonder if Draco will tell people, probably not, he can’t have people knowing how he spends his time, not when it's lying in the grass kissing Gryffindor monsters.  
You fling yourself on your bed, alone and happy that the squeezing in your stomach has lessened just for a while. You turn onto your back and stare at the ceiling in the dark. A part of you wants to forget, wants to forget how good it felt, but you can’t. Without blood in your mouth, you feel incomplete, a part of you is now missing. It's disgusting, it’s a sickness, but its also the best you’ve felt in so long. So, how can you deny yourself what you know you love, what you know in the deepest pits of your heart, you really, really want. Lying in bed in the dark, all the blood has gone from your tongue, and you miss it, miss it so much, so much that it actually hurts. You can’t stop thinking about it, even though you shouldn’t be getting ready for bed. You turn onto your side and stare at the clock. More time has passed than you thought, time seems to melt away when you’re thinking about that wooze you always want to feel. You should be asleep. You should be asleep. You should be asleep. But you’re awake. You’re awake staring at the ceiling and thinking of the grey and the green and the blood in your mouth. Before you can stop it, your tongue is exploring the walls of your cheek, you chew on it, and it bleeds. That blood does not have the same tang of suspense or the rattling aftertaste of terror, but it is better than nothing. 

He is your other half and you were his.

You don’t know if you’re awake anymore, nor do you care, the ceiling is merging with the walls and they’re both fading into black. The blood has dried in your mouth and your eyes are burning and Tom is lying beside you. Fingers outstretched, and that hungry look in his eyes. He is murmuring things you don’t understand, words that seem to jumble before your eyes, fall apart and reconstruct. He doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind at all. All he does it lean his hands over and run his knuckles down your cheek. He feels so hot on your skin, burning, searing, scorching lines beneath his fingers. Then he’s climbing on top of you, telling you that he’s what you need. Then he’s kissing you and you’re not telling him to stop. His kisses aren’t soft or gentle or anything like rabbit-fur; they feel as though your face is being smashed against concrete, perhaps it is? You have no way of telling anymore. All you know is that Tom is leaning over you, with his mouth pressed against you giving you exactly what you want. He doesn’t care to be gentle, doesn’t care to be pleasant, nor polite, and you can feel the bite under every kiss, he wants to hurt you, and you almost want him to. Want him to bite down so hard that your blood fills his mouth and he can taste you, and you want to sink your teeth into him, taste him too. Then the two of you can be together again in some superficial way. You could just lie here forever, but he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to hold you down and hook the monsters out of your mouth, cover your tongue in foxgloves until you’re dizzy. He’s dragging his mouth down your body. You still don’t stop him. Even when he’s dipping his head between your thighs and mouthing ever so slowly, you still don’t stop him. You’ve never had anyone’s mouth around you before and it really does make you feel like you’re burning alive. Makes you feel as though you’re coming apart at the seems and between all your cracks his body is growing, infecting you like grass in a patio. He just wants you to feel, to feel more than you ever felt before, to drag you into his burning world until you can’t live without him, and what is worse, is that you want him to. You are not sure what compels you to do your next action, but you suspect it is him. Him willing you to do it, him willing you to fulfil the thing that is banging in the back of your brain, and this late there is no filter on your thoughts, or on your actions. There is no rationality left inside your head to tell you _not_ to take your forearm between your teeth. Nothing to stop you biting down and feeling that lovely sting. It is easier than you expected it to be, just a dull ache that becomes a throb when you sink your teeth in deeper. You mimic his movements, suck and swallow, suck and swallow until you can feel the faintest tinge of blood. Then you can’t stop. This flow is heavier, thicker, sliding over the back of your throat, and burning in just the right way. It is what you’ve been looking for, longing for, for much longer than you ever realised. Just the feeling of you, perhaps it is narcissistic, but does that really matter? Not to you. Not anymore. All that matters in your eyes is that your teeth and his tongue never stop what they’re doing.  
Briefly you raise your arm, just to see him. Just to see him lying between your thighs, just to see his eyes almost black, just to see his lips stretched wide. You can’t bear it, so you do the only thing that seems to make sense, having your flesh in your mouth, and your blood sliding down your chin, and a sense of shame intertwining with something sharp and hot that stabs through your stomach every time he swirls his tongue. That is what you do, and that is what feels so good, and then it changes because he is doing something obscene with his mouth. Something that makes you choke and involuntarily roll your hips, something that makes you bite down hard. Half a second later you realise there is something sitting heavy on your tongue. A part of you, torn away. You know you shouldn’t, that this is crossing every single line of depravity, and for the first time, you are genuinely scared, but then he’s curling his tongue and you are chewing and you are swallowing and you know you have done something horrible. 

He is your other half and you were his.

A part of you is horrified. You know that in just a minute you crossed an invisible line dividing the right and the wrong, and even now, lying in the dark, you’re aware that you’re still on the wrong side. Realising that you don’t feel guilty for what you wanted, you don’t regret what you have done, even though it makes you sick to even think about. Maybe it’s because a weight feels like it has been lifted from your shoulders, no longer do you feel that stabbing twisting ache. Instead you feel calm, collected, _satisfied_ for the first time in ages. So, what does it matter that you must look a sight? What does it matter that your mouth is smeared with your own blood and that your own body is stuck between your teeth? What does it matter that anyone sane would declare you a monster? Tom doesn’t think you’re a monster. Tom doesn’t think you’re disgusting. Tom doesn’t think you’re sick, and Tom has to be right. He says it was the best thing he has ever seen, and you agree, it was the best thing that you’ve ever felt. Almost like you were floating high above the world, disconnected from reality on a cotton-candy cloud. The feeling is enough to quell your doubts about what this makes you, about whether you’ll do it again. A part of you wants to, wants to taste every part of you, wants to learn if all your fingers taste the same, if you can cut parts of yourself away and savour them so slowly. But you also want to know what Tom tastes like, does he have your aroma, does he have your flavour, would his blood taste the same as yours. That is what you wonder long after he has melted back into the shadows, leaving you lying along on your bed with blood on your teeth and contentment in your chest. 

He is your other half and you were his.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I will be updating as regularly as I can, and hopefully it will all be completed by the time my exam season kicks off in April, but I am also one of the worst updaters I know, so I can but pray that that goal will actually be achieved, sorry.


End file.
